About Policy Links

Policy Links is a not-for-profit innovation consultancy unit whose aim is to help governments develop effective industrial innovation policies. The Unit is part of IfM Education and Consultancy Services Limited (IfM ECS), the Institute for Manufacturing’s knowledge transfer arm, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the University of Cambridge. Policy Links was established in December 2016 thanks to the generous support from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.

Background

Carlos has extensive consulting experience in manufacturing and innovation policy. He has advised several national and regional governments as well as international organisations, including recent engagements with UNIDO, OECD and WEF.

Carlos started his career with quality control and automation engineering roles at Toyota and General Electric. In 2015, he was seconded at the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and was a visiting researcher at the Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Tokyo.

Carlos holds a PhD in industrial economics and innovation policy from the University of Cambridge, and is a member of Downing College.

‘Opening up the black box’ (New Statesman, July 2017). In this article, we argue that in order to make effective technology and innovation policy, the UK needs to know more about how innovation really happens in modern industries.

‘The UK’s post Brexit economy hinges on small businesses and innovation’ (The Conversation, July 2017). In this opinion piece, we argue that SMEs (which constitute 99.9% of all businesses in the UK) have a critical role to play if the UK is to tackle key challenges holding the economy back, which could be further accentuated by Brexit, including a large trade deficit and low levels of SME engagement in innovation.

‘What does "Made in Britain" means’ (Prospect, December 2016). Written in collaboration with Professor Andy Neely, this article discusses the question of how UK manufacturing might fare post-Brexit, discussing data to highlight the degree of dependency of UK manufacturing on access to the EU single market.

Recent publications and working papers

Blancas, A., & López-Gómez, C. (Forthcoming). Technological and financial integration of SMEs in Mexico: towards a new industrialisation policy. In Industrial Challenges in Mexico (Ed.). School of Economics, National Polytechnic Institute. [Book chapter in Spanish].

López-Gómez, C. and O’Sullivan, E. (2012). National and regional value-capture in evolving industrial systems: insights from Singapore’s aerospace industry. University of Cambridge Centre for Industry and Government Working Paper. An earlier version of this paper was presented in March 2012 at the Institute for Technology, Enterprise and Competitiveness (ITEC), Doshisha University.

Andreoni, A. and López-Gómez, C. (2011). Can we live on services? Exploring the black box of manufacturing-services interfaces for operations management and industrial policy design. Presented at the Singapore Economic Review Conference 2011, Singapore. A revised version was presented at the DRUID Academy Conference 2012, Cambridge.